Stories and other stuff

I went fishing with my middle son today.  We had fun, I caught four fish and kept two.  I taught him again how to tie a fishing knot and how to clean a trout.  We wanted to go again on Wednesday but the truck has issues. I've suspected I had a head gasket leak for some time now.  I'm past the suspecting point because today it got worse.  It got change the water pump worse because it didn't look like the water pump was working properly.  It's got 157,000 miles on it.  It did it's job.  Now there's a shiny new one.  And the truck still overheats. We got about a mile from the second ex's (I'm really sorry I have to say that...and ashamed, by the way) house when the truck started to overheat.  We made it to her house without serious damage to the truck but decided to change the water pump after some preliminary troubleshooting.  We went and bought parts and tools because I was in Murray and my stuff is up here.  The kid will in...

The when or what of this story doesn't matter, but I almost stumbled the other day.  I almost stepped back into the worldview that things that aren't OK sometimes are, for the right reasons.  They're not and fortunately on the day when I almost stumbled God stepped in. I wasn't where I needed to be, relationship wise, and there gets to be a point in relationships where they either need to grow or die.  When you're dating someone who has needs you can't meet, sometimes the best thing you can do is let go.  Let's face it, I never know when it's time to let go and it was time a few weeks ago. I tried to stumble but God prevented it!  A phone call went unanswered and when it was finally returned, the ensuing conversation morphed into something God used to get both of us to see that the relationship was not where either of us needed to be.  The thing is though, I had no intention of things turning out the way they did.  It was just a God thing.  At...

Honestly, gang.  You really wouldn't believe it if I told you. I still don't believe it.

I had a very restorative day today.  Many of you know that my favorite Scripture is Joel 2:25 because of the promise it contains.  The King James reads:   And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. What a great promise that contains and when I read it, my heart just latched onto that verse.  It doesn't mean that everything will go back to the way it was, but it's a promise from God of restoration.  In my case, that restoration began with taking something away from me.  I had to lose almost everything for me to be lost enough that Jesus found me.  He, as I point out, was not the one that was lost.  I was.  My growth as a Christian didn't happen overnight, either.  The burden of sins of the past was listed but not the consequences of them.  Those will follow me the rest of my life.  So will the blessings of t...

I watched a little video on grace today that was made by a redeemed Christian author.  She's a saint with a past, which includes drug and alcohol addiction and having an abortion.  She mentioned that she received a critique of a book she wrote about her life from a fellow Christian wanting to know why she didn't have more shame about the abortion.  Her answer was a good one.  She's been forgiven.  She's repented.  She is redeemed, thanks to grace.  This woman is right and today was a good day to be reminded of God's grace.  She says not living in God's grace is akin to going to a party and standing against the wall and refusing to dance or have a good time.  She can't change her mistakes, but God can and did change her, and me too. Today is Psalm 51 day.  I wasn't going to post it because, like the woman in the story above, I too am forgiven by God's grace and Christ's sacrifice on the cross.  There is no need to be at the party ...

God always finds things for me to do when my life is really, really hard.  I get the opportunity to bless those that persecute me and hurt me.  I don't say that sarcastically.  It just seems like when I'm hurt, part of the healing process is lending a helping hand to the person that hurt me.  It's part of forgiveness, I think and a lesson I'm all too familiar with.  In this case it means doing something I said I would for Cindy although I'm certainly under no obligation to do so. Aside from that, I'm usually really busy when life gets me down and this week is no exception.  Tuesday I have a VA appointment for my hearing loss.  There is a dental appointment someplace in there this week too.  And on Friday, I have an eye exam. On Wednesday, I will have to go to work early because of a function at work on Thursday.  Friday and Saturday aren't mine, either because of mandatory overtime.  That's really a blessing this week.  I will b...

I've been around the block a time or two.  Sometimes it's easy for me, and for people that don't know me all that well to not realize the breadth of the experiences I've had.  Nobody's seen it all but I've seen quite a bit in my half-century on the planet and for the life of me I will never understand what happened to me. At the outset I thought it was just a test to see if I would and I did.  I talked about why Cindy was back in my life and I won't talk about why she's not; mostly because right now I still don't understand why she's not.  I doubt I ever will.  But I will tell you how it happened. I was talking to my dear friend and I told her point blank that I was dating Cindy again but it was weird.  She told me Cindy had to go.  Four hours later, I called Cindy all happy and started asking about our plans for this weekend.  Three minutes into the conversation, Cindy and I were not dating anymore.  She asked me if we could still be ...

I awoke at 8:30.  I did not wake up to natural causes or an alarm clock, per-se.  I woke up to the loud whimper of a dog that had to GO!  The phone rang about two minutes after I got out of bed and let the dogs out and it was a friend of mine from church.  He wanted to go have breakfast.  Not really in the budget but hey, fellowship is an important part of life so I went. At the restaurant, I noticed a copy of City Weekly  talking about working conditions at Hill AFB.  I can tell you that the article portrays an accurate description of the working conditions at the base.  I've seen them first hand and yours truly avoids being caught up in it my just keeping my mouth shut and doing my job.  I don't complain.  I do whatever is assigned to me.  I just do the best job I can and hope that retirement comes soon.  There is nepotism.  There are friends hiring friends.  There are supervisors in positions that persecute emplo...

Short post today, just to keep y'all reading this thing.  I've tried to write, honestly I have, but there's just so much I can't tell. But I will and can tell this story. A while ago, I got this bright idea to start saving all the money I find on the ground and donating it to my church's missions activities.  There are other folks out there really carrying the mail for Christ and my small contributions are God's; if I find it, it goes in a jar and when the jar fills, I turn it in to the missions funds our church contributes to. My mom took hold of this idea and started her own "Pennies from Heaven" fund.  My mom has been blessed beyond measure.  I find pennies, my mom finds serious cash. She found $50 once.  She turned it in to the store where she found it and nobody claimed it, so they gave it to her.  It went into her fund.  She always finds money at the store; just change mostly.  This happened to her the other day, though. She was wa...

This is a photo of my raspberry patch.  When we first moved into the house, we noticed a few canes of raspberries, but they'd never really amounted to much.  Over the years, kids have played in the back 40 and broken them to use as whips.  Deer have trampled them.  Weeds tried to choke them out.  I all but gave up until two years ago, when I noticed that the raspberries were running for open ground.   June had cleared off a spot and the raspberries were migrating to the open ground where they found room to grow and water.  Two years ago, I cleaned them out.  Last year, I did the same thing and put a bunch of red bark mulch around them.  This year, we have raspberries coming out our ears. The raspberry patch is thriving because I took the time to weed it and keep it going a couple of years ago.  Last year, we had a couple of bowls full of raspberries.  This year, we had enough to make two batches of jam, and that's just...